Drawn from Aelfric’s Old English Lives of the Saints, this is an edition of the lives of the little-known virgin spouses: Julian and Basilissa, Cecilia and Valerian, and Chrysanthus and Daria. As well as the Old English original texts, it provides the reader with modern English parallel-text translations. As a useful comparison, their closest Latin source texts are also reproduced – again with English parallel-text translations. As a leading churchman writing at the time of the Viking raids at the end of the first millennium, Aelfric wrote his Lives to bolster the faith of English Christians. These three stories of couples who marry but do not consummate their unions point to an ideal of marital celibacy in Aelfric’s programme of pastoral care. Taken together, the group provides an opportunity to emphasise different but related points about literal and figurative types of chastity and purity appropriate to the laity.

Robert K. Upchurch is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of North Texas, Denton.

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
The Latin Legends of the Virgin Spouses
Treatments of the Latin Legends by Anglo-Saxon Authors other than Aelfric
Aelfric's Treatment of the Latin Legends in the Lives of Saints
The Language of the Old English Texts
Aelfric's Latin Sources
Notes to the Introduction
Select Bibliography
Old English Texts and Translations; Editorial Procedure
I. Julian and Basilissa
II. Cecilia and Valerian
III. Chrysanthus and Daria
Commentary
Latin Texts and Translations
Editorial Procedure
I. Julian and Basilissa
II. Cecilia and Valerian
III. Chrysanthus and Daria
Commentary
Glossary